Last weekend I tested the PCB v 1.0. I cut a very simple case out of birch plywood on a laser cutter for transportation and tripod usage. The good news first, it works :)

The GPs module got a satelite lock within a acceptable time frame and tranmitted the data (NMEA sentences) via bluetooth to my old HTC m7! On the smart phone I used the Bluetooth GPS app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=googoo.android.btgps&hl=en_US) to mock the GPS service. To do so, one has to enable this option in the develper settings (no root required). After that Osmand was able to use the data to show my current location and record a track. For comparison I also started a recording on my current phone (Xiaomi Mi Mix 2) with GPS, Glonass support.

As you can see, both phones have their deviations from the actual path. Sometimes the GPS module showed the more accurate position, sometimes the Xiaomi phone. I noticed that the phone always used > 12 satelites where as the module only used 6-8 although both GPS receivers saw around 20 satelites. Maybe the antenna placement of my module was not optimal or the configuration of the u-blox module has to be changed.

Magenta (Xiaomi Mi Mix 2), Red (GPS Module)

If one analyses the tracks in more detail it appears to me that the GPS module does less jumps back and forth than the mobile phone and it reports the position always a little more on the right hand side of the acuall track.

For a first test I am quite happy that it works !

I will redesign the PCB and case and try out the new version as soon as possible.